It's pruning time in the garden now. I'm a little bit late this year and I'm getting a bit twitchy that with the mild weather the trees might start growing before I'm done. I managed to lose my folding pruning saw so finally took the plunge and bought a Silky Fox Gomtaro. It arrived yesterday so I set about pruning the apple trees and a few others. The saw is great; very quick to cut through branches and leaves a very clean cut. Would definitely recommend it.

One dilemma was what to do with trees close to the polytunnel. The polytunnel wasn't in the original plan for the garden. It seemed like a good solution to replace the old shed and was much cheaper than a greenhouse, but it was always going to be a compromise in a small forest garden. It has been a real success but I'm not sure that I want to alter the final design too much. In particular there is a hazel tree and a mulberry tree to the south of the polytunnel. The hazel is unlikely to get much taller than about 2 m and only shades the tunnel when the sun is low. The mulberry though has the potential to get really large and shade the tunnel. However, it is late into leaf so it doesn't shade the tunnel all year long. So on the one hand the tunnel can provide lots of produce but needs more input and on the other the mulberry provides some tasty fruit late in the season and is very attractive and will be a real feature when larger. Well I couldn't quite decide and for this year I pruned just some of the lower branches very close to the polytunnel surface and raised the canopy a little. I was pleased with the result although the wounds weeped a whte milky sap. Hopefully the tree will be ok. It left a sticky mess on my new pruning saw too!

Shadows of mulberry branches on polytunnel with low sun in winter.

I also pruned the apple trees in the garden. The standard apples are getting pretty big now and I only pruned them lightly. I cut back some of the lower branches of the Tydeman's Late Orange which tends to droop down quite low. I am hoping that it will encourage more vigour into the higher branches. One of my cats decided to help me out too.